Grassy Narrows, Dave Brophy and Treaty Relations

Anyone who has travelled on the prairies knows the meaning of a big sky. It is here that the heavens look their grandest. It looks like the horizon never ends. It is really interesting to imagine what it would like when there was no hydro lines scattered towards the far off horizon. These Great Plains were the sight of significant historical resistance to capitalist accumulation by oppressed populations. Here is where many Indigenous nations made their stands against imperial domination. Métis, Nehiyaw (Cree), Anishinaabe, Dakota (Sioux) all have a history of resistance here. Maybe it’s the fact the world seems limitless on the plains. Our destination is past the tree lines, amongst the boreal forests. We are going to the community of Grassy Narrows, an Anishinaabe reserve known for one of the longest blockades in Canadian history. This community has fought hard against exploitation of its traditional treaty territory.

Grassroots activists in Grassy Narrows have a strong relationship with members of the Winnipeg activist community. This trip is dedicated to honouring those relations, it is a time of remembering the relationships made and the people returned to the earth. In particular, this trip is to honour Dave Brophy. Brophy was one of the original solidarity activists involved with Friends of Grassy Narrows and a dedicated supporter of Indigenous resistance. Brophy is talked of as a mainstay and his loss in the community is still felt. This trip was to honour his memory, to wipe each others’ tears, but to also renew the relationships between people left behind.

The trip to Grassy took us through the Great Plains and into the Shield which many in the land known as Ontario recognize so well. To many others this land is known as Treaty 3 Territory. We drove through Kenora, Ontario which is known as the Mississippi of the North. Kenora is known for its history and present of racist violence steeped in colonialism. It was here in 1974 the Ojibway Warrior’s Society took over Anicinabe Park. In this small city the Indigenous population is brutalized by racist police and racist residents on a constant basis. A public meeting was held two days earlier to initiate a grassroots response to this consistent trend of brutality and disrespect.

After a short break to catch a bite to eat we begin our trip up the regional highway that starts in Kenora and ends in Grassy. Highway 671 is a driver’s dream: it has sharp turns, lots of rolling hills and beautiful cascading views of fall yellows and deep blue lakes that only the shield can provide to the onlooker. It is like the propaganda paintings of group of seven members, which we use to hide Canada’s ugly realities. At the end of this picture perfect road we are coming to an Indian Reserve. Indian reserves are patches of land all across Canada designated for Indians to live on. They are essentially the remnants of segregated communities produced by the combination of deeply held racism and liberal attitudes of humanitarianism. Indian reservations are often places of extreme poverty and poor health quality. Most reserves in the north of a province are under boil water advisories and have poor sewage systems. They are rural post-colonial ghettos, where people hope for freedom but are marginalized from the slim luxuries of Euro-Canadian industrial civilization.

They are places where racially coded poverty is plain to see for everyone brave enough to come and look. At the same time these are the only places where Indigenous peoples get recognition of ownership of the land by the Canadian government. Reserves exist because our families, our communities and our nations-states stole the land from the Indigenous families and we didn’t give the Indigenous families enough to survive on. The legacy of this treachery and banditry lasts to this day.

As we arrive on the reservation we are greeted by comrades and companions who have also travelled to honour Brophy. This is a time when people are open and honest and simply speaking from the heart. It is one of those rare times when conversations are true and there is no awkwardness and people can be in the moment. People share their stories, their ideas and their dreams. It’s painfully funny how it takes this occasion for many people to be real. I am here to honour someone who walked the pathway before me in my newly chosen home. It is a very Indigenous way of thinking to truly honour those who came before you. It is one concept I really have respect since my introduction to Anishinaabe ways of knowing.

There are a lot of things that people are forgetting to honour. I think one very important thing to honour is the treaties signed between Indigenous peoples and the settlers who came to live in this land. Harold Johnson, an Indigenous Lawyer, describes the treaties as the adoption of the European family by the Indigenous peoples. He insists that the right of Canada to exist stems from the treaties signed with Indigenous peoples. Harold Johnson’s explanation stems from his discussions with Nehiyaw elders of Treaty 6.

Johnson insists that the right for the settlers to live and grow on this land, in other words, settler nation’s sovereignty stems from their treaty rights. This was the settler Europeans’ initial acceptance of the supremacy of the Creator’s law. Johnson insists that his family, the Cree people, never accepted the authority of the Canadian government over them because their law does not recognize abstractions, paper, or crowns as holding power. Treaties were about making relations between equal peoples, nations, families. He insists much like the Two Row Wampum, of the Haudenosaunee, that these are treaties of non-interference in each other’s affairs. They are treaties of friendship and cohabitation, they are treaties of companionship.

The meeting of friends and allies at Grassy Narrows to honour Dave Brophy highlights how the treaties intended us as peoples to interact. We have different laws, different customs, different lives but we can be friends and have relations as equals. We can share experiences of loss, of happiness and of healing. We can hold each other tight when we grieve and smile as the pain begins to go away, we can eat from the same cup and share our stories together. We do not need to have the same family structure, same political structure or the same cultures to be equal and have meaningful friendships. This is the meaning of peaceful coexistence. Dave Brophy’s memory lives on and reminds us of how we were intended to live together settlers and Anishinaabe.

As we stand on the edge of the pow-wow grounds, a tree in honour of Dave is being planted where a tee-pee once stood during the blockading days. A tree to symbolize his commitment to the protection of Grassy Narrows, a tree to symbolize his friends and families love of him for all he was, and a symbol of respect. Planting a tree can also symbolize what we as settlers and Indigenous peoples need to begin to do together. Rebuild and renew our connections to the Earth and each other. We need to reclaim the original intent of the treaties and begin to walk in a good way. We need to plant many more trees of friendship and let the roots grow strong.

As activists, anarchists and supporters, we need to do well to honour the treaties that give us our entitlement to exist here on Turtle Island; we need to honour these relations. In our theories and our daily practice we need to develop a practice of anti-colonial organizing. We need to daily think about challenging the government’s authority over Indigenous communities, and still keep our covenants with the other peoples of Turtle Island. When we tear apart the state and end capitalism we still have the treaties and our relationship to the original peoples to deal with. A revolutionary organization based in the settler community still needs to deal with the treaties and displacement of Indigenous peoples. This problem will not disappear with the end of capitalism. This issue of land supersedes any change in state or economic system. As long as we do not reconcile the principles of social equality with prior occupancy of Indigenous peoples there will be the possibility for conflict.

As supporters of Indigenous struggles we need to remember they are in part struggling against communities we are a part of. We need to remember and be mindful of our relations to those who oppress and benefit from the oppression of Indigenous peoples. We need to be conscious of how our lives are related to oppressing Indigenous communities. This means attention to organizing in our community. Supporting Indigenous struggle is directly linked to reform, revolution and change in our community. We need to be able to restrain corporations and government from breaching Indigenous sovereignty. The way to do this is to gain control of our communities and do anti-colonial education to gain support for our collective liberation. Organizing our own communities for resistance is the way we can best conduct true solidarity organizing. This is the pathway of action we must take.

This article was written in the fall of 2008 and kept until now to pay respect to the friends comrades and family of Dave Brophy.

Rev is an exiled member of Common Cause and an anarchist militant involved in organizing against Police Violence in Winnipeg, Manitoba and an organizer in the IWW. From these groups he supports Indigenous Struggles.

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4 Responses

It is interesting to think about treaties, as documents of friendship or companionship. How to you deal with the fact that they are ‘contracts of friendship’ between a people and a State? Who is the subject of the treaty, on the settler side?
I ask these questions about of a respect and a desire to learn. I have a problem of considering myself the settler-subject of the treaty. (Not because, I -the ego- never signed the tready: since this is often used as a settler apologist excuse for the treatment of natives by settlers.) I do not consider the subject of the treaty for three reasons: my purposeful disassociation with the settler-state-subject that agreed to them; the settler-state-subject of the treaty uses the treaty itself as a weapon against Natives; and I see the Native collective-treaty-subject as a community not a State.
Any thoughts on my problem?

I find treaties to be really hard to deal with for anarchists, because the settler-subject is the Queen/her subjects by written word. However, I’m unsure who the perceived subject was at the time of signing and promises.

Treaties do entitle all non-native people to the use of various lands. This is possible with our without a state. I would say initially it was presumed without a state. Especially the states we have now, at least on the part of the Indigenous. I think the Indigenous did not understand our culture and social structure as much as we didn’t understand their social structure and culture. I’m curious to know how many or how the treaty commissioner came to represent a queen and all the whites.

I think anarchists need to develop a coherent response to treaty claims that allows us to be allies in struggle so that Indigenous peoples are not more so co-opted into the fold of the state and capitalist system.

I think the answer is for anarchists to use existing treaties as part of our basis for planning a future society. Further, I think reclaiming the treaty process, or re-treatying and affirmation of pass commitments on a grassroots level may allow us to bypass the state and develop real and true relationships at the communities level.

I agree with you that anarchist, include us, need to develop a coherent response to the treaties and their practical applications. I also agree with the fact that treaties could entitle various land use strategies and land tenure interactions between communities.

I still have a problem with have the indigenous-subject as a community and the settler-subject as the state/queen. This seems disingenuous to me, since on one side is a nation-state and the other a collective (with governance but not government). In anyway, I am having a hard time understanding it outside of a contract-system in forced by the state. Not withstanding Proudon’s use of contracts, I find any idea of contracts to be looked down upon by anarchist theory, because it needs an external party (the state, etc . . .) to operate.

This leaves me with two questions:
1) Can we seen the international community, or our communities, as the external third party to the contract between Indigenous and Settler communities, in the treaty?
2) Proudhon’s understanding of contract is only between individuals, never collectives. Could we see treaties as between a settler and a Native, but not between communities? Is this a helpful place to start?

Thanks for writing this. It honours Dave and the work of his life and points toward new ways of being as settlers. We are so often caught up in criticism for it’s own sake that we ignore the evidence that thereason Indigenous communities survived genocide was community, everyday resistance and sustaining values. We need to find those rich traditions in our own culture and communites. Want are our rites of passage, our memorial celebrations, our rituals of sharing grief? Ultimately what sustains us?

This is urgently needed if we are to survive this system without burning out, being eliminated or destroying ourselves (and hurting our ally communities in the process)